1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for processing an internet packet, and more particularly, to an IPv4/IPv6 dual stack software/hardware apparatus for processing an internet packet and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) protocol provides greater scalability and flexibility as compared with an existing IPv4 protocol. The IPv6 protocol provides flexibility through an extension header unlike IPv4 protocol. Further, an ICMPv6 protocol also has various types according to an operation method.
In order to process the extension header and an ICMPv6 packet, a hardware device having a considerably complicated form is required.
However, since the extension header of an IPv6 packet or several ICMPv6 packets are not so frequently used, addition of a complicated hardware arrangement to process the extension header of the IPv6 packet and several ICMPv6 packets significantly degrades cost-effectiveness.
It is considerably expected that an IPv6 technology is applied to an embedded system such as a sensor node or a wireless terminal in which a system resource is significantly restrictive.
In the embedded system, there is a need for an IPv4/IPv6 packet processor having high receptivity/flexibility/maintenance satisfying various applications by using a limited resource.
Recently, there is a request for an Internet packet processor capable of processing both an IPv4 protocol and an IPv6 protocol and receiving variable factors of IPv6 when an IPv4 network and an IPv6 network coexist.